Archive for the ‘wrong medications’ Category

American healthcare has a secret few want to face; conditions “worse than Federal prison” in some cases.

American nursing homes and healthcare for the elderly dehumanizes, degrades, demeans and even harms the people that paid for middle-class and middle-aged Americans and their many luxuries.

After visiting a friend in a nursing home yesterday, my companion said, “That place is worse than Federal prison.”

My friends are “retired convicts,” as one said. He told me he’d rather be on death row than in the nursing home facility we visited yesterday.

Our friend in the nursing home wasn’t sure he was getting the proper medications, hadn’t had a bath or shower in weeks and a human waste bucket that had been next to his bed for days stood close to his cold breakfast.

And he’s one of the lucky ones.

More than 90 percent of nursing homes were cited for violations of federal health and safety standards last year, and for-profit homes were more likely to have problems than other types of nursing homes, federal investigators say in a report issued last September.

The report last September by Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services said 17 percent of nursing homes had deficiencies that caused “actual harm or immediate jeopardy” to patients.

The veterans of World War II, for example, the people Tom Brokaw called the “Greatest Generation,” sometimes live out their last days of their lives in their own filth — and in facilities paid for mainly by your tax dollars and your insurance companies.

Tom Brokaw by David Shankbone

The poorer you are in America the more likely you are to become neglected, unwashed and uncared-for as an older prerson put away in a nursing home.

You can bet Tom Brokaw won’t end up living in aged squalor.

We’ve visited hundreds of nursing homes over the past year. Some good. Some bad. Some deplorable.

But our overarching impression is this: while you are making money and lots of it, America loves you. After your energy and money runs out you’ll be treated like an African refugee from Darfur.

There is now a move to rate nursing homes nation-wide. We support this effert.

The nursing home “industry” is opposed to ratings and angry.

The system “is poorly planned, prematurely implemented and hamhandedly rolled out,” said Larry Minnix, president and chief executive officer of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, an industry trade group.

If you’ve been in a below average nursing home lately, you’ll likely support the new rating system — any new rating system.

More than 90 percent of nursing homes were cited for violations of federal health and safety standards last year, and for-profit homes were more likely to have problems than other types of nursing homes, federal investigators say in a report issued on Monday.
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About 17 percent of nursing homes had deficiencies that caused “actual harm or immediate jeopardy” to patients, said the report, by Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Inspectors received 37,150 complaints about conditions in nursing homes last year, and they substantiated 39 percent of them, the report said. About one-fifth of the complaints verified by federal and state authorities involved the abuse or neglect of patients.

About two-thirds of nursing homes are owned by for-profit companies, while 27 percent are owned by nonprofit organizations and 6 percent by government entities, the report said.

The inspector general said 94 percent of for-profit nursing homes were cited for deficiencies last year, compared with 88 percent of nonprofit homes and 91 percent of government homes.